


May the bridges I have burned light my way back home

by silverxrain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Supernatural Season 08
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Castiel have disappeared to God knows where, and the only family Sam has left in the world are a teenage genius and his fearless mother. </p><p>The Trans are his responsibility now, and Sam puts finding his brother on hold as he exorcises grieving widow Amelia Richardson, works a case with ex-hacker Charlie Bradbury, and discovers the Men of Letters bunker, training Kevin and Linda to fight the supernatural. </p><p>Eventually, they all move into the Bunker and start hunting together, and Sam somehow becomes patriarch of his most mismatched family yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because this is fanfiction, and I can do what I like, let's assume the episode "What's Up, Tiger Mommy" is set before the s7 finale and the Winchesters have already met Linda, and at the end of the episode, instead of Kevin running off with his mother, the leviathans kidnap him to prepare for the season finale. This whole thing is pretty AU anyway. It'll be explained in flashbacks in the story.

Finally, this convoluted, despairing quest seems to be coming to an end. Finally there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Stab the leviathan leader in the neck, drive off with Dean in the Impala, and Cas lives happily ever after in a two bedroom apartment with their new ally Meg.

Of course it doesn't end that way.

Roman is glowing when Sam runs into the room. The stab wound in his neck is leaking black liquid like crazy, and he's choking, and the light is growing bigger and bigger and filling the whole room. Sam wants to yell at them to get away, because he knows in his hunter-instinctive gut something not good is about to happen.  
Afterwards, of course, he spends a year _not kicking himself, wringing himself dry, more like_ with frustration and despair because if /he'd only called them away/ the three of them might be together today.

But Sam instead throws out an arm to hold Kevin back, because for the first time in his life there's someone younger than him to take care of and hell if Sam will fail at this.

The light grows huge, envelops them.

They're gone.

The two people closest to him in the world left alive. Dean and Castiel, his brother and his best friend.

His entire world.

Sam's whole brain just goes 'what the hell'.

 

So there he is, in Roman Enterprises, or wherever the hell their grand showdown was held this time. He's had so many and the action is so relentless it's hard to remember. He's still got an arm in front of Kevin. He drops it.

He's been heaving breaths, staring at the empty space where three people who had occupied his life for various lengths of time had just disappeared into nowhere, maybe forever. He just stands, and stares.

And stands.

And stares.

And tries his best to breathe.

Sam has spent a year trying to keep his eyes open.

He spends the first year without his brother trying to learn how to breathe again.

 

Kevin has left with his mother. Meg has teleported away, or so Sam assumes. The rest of the leviathans will flee once they realise their leader has fallen, but those shapeshifting Purgatory monsters will rip him to shreds if he can't _stupid!_ bring himself to move his frozen body.

And if he's ripped to shreds who's going to go looking for Dean?

Sam forces himself to move. On autopilot he quickly and quietly exits the building and hot-wires a car in the parking lot. The leviathan driving it won't miss it. They've got bigger things to worry about, like their planned collapse of human civilisation turning into a shambles. Sam wonders vaguely if their human hosts will survive. He finds he doesn't much care, and that should shock him, but he might already be in shock, fingers numb and knuckles white around the steering wheel. Sam's not even sure if he's still in his body, so little is anything physical registering with him.

His body is on the verge of loosening, when Roman Enterprises is six hours away from him, and the Impala's headlights are little beams of light in the darkness ahead.

Then he thinks, _my whole family is gone_ , and locks up so tight that he's forced to pull over before he crashes the Impala, frozen behind the wheel.

 _my whole family is gone, my whole family is gone_ repeats in his head, hysterically, and Sam can't breathe.

Just when he thinks he might actually have a heart attack, not even thirty and young and strong, but he knows that this kind of shock can do that to you, when his phone rings, and shatters the straining silence that was on the verge of breaking anyway.

Sam doesn't move for a second, then grabs his phone from the seat behind them and hits Answer as fast as a thought. He has the ridiculous notion that it's Dean, and he's calling to say that him and Cas are fine, just stranded three states away in a bar and waiting for Sam to pick them up. And he's dead if he damages Baby. And Cas has started a bar fight with one of his strange comments.

Sam aches for that, and he wants it so desperately that he believes it, he believes he's going to hear Dean's voice and everything will be fine and the world will be tipped back into the right angle on the axis.

It's not. He knows it's not. "Sam, where are you?" Linda Tran's voice crackled over the phone.

Silence, filled with heavy breathing. Sam hasn't spoken in six hours, and he doesn't know if his throat can produce a sound now.

"Sam?" Linda's voice is full of motherly anxiety. "Are you okay? Sam! Is something wrong?"

"I... I'm fine, Linda," Sam manages to croak.

Her sigh of relief is audible. "Good. I thought for a second one of those things had got you."

"Is Kevin safe?" Sam asks immediately now that he's got his voice back. "You guys got away okay, right?"

"Yes," Linda says. "We're at a motel. We haven't left the state, figured they might start chasing. Like dogs, you know. Dogs don't chase if you don't run."

"Yeah, I know. I like dogs," Sam says, then wonders why this is important. But he's asked the important question and received the correct answer: the Trans are safe.

"Hey, Sam." It's Kevin. "Did you find out what happened to Dean and that angel friend of yours?"

"I-" Sam's throat seizes up, but he chokes down the imaginary lump. _why are you being such a baby. it's far from the first time you've lost your brother_

_lost your brother_

_lost your brother_

"I can't- I don't know what happened to them," Sam almost sobs. He doesn't want to worry Kevin, even though the cracks in his voice are more like a yawning chasm in the earth than anything human vocal patterns should sound like. "I don't know where they are, Kevin. They're just gone," he says, slightly calmer now he's said it out loud. "Dean and Cas are missing."

"We're gonna find them though, right?" Kevin asks. "You're gonna find out where they are, right, Sam?"

"Yeah," he says, his voice surprisingly steady. Not because of Kevin's faith, which he knows is misplaced. Because he has said 'we'.

Linda comes back on the phone. "So let's regroup. Call us when you get a motel wherever you are, and we'll drive up in a day or two when all this fuss is calmed down."

"Yeah. You take care, you hear me? Roman may be dead, but his followers are still loose, and panicked."

"We know how to protect ourselves, Sam," Linda says. "We've learned a lot since we first met you. You take care of yourself, Sam."

"I will, thanks Linda. I'll call you."

"You see that you do," she says, and she painfully reminds him of Ellen for a second.

But Sam's chest is a lot looser when he hangs up the phone, because he's suddenly realized he hasn't lost his _whole_ family.

-

In the end, Sam is the one who goes to them.

He's spent a sleepless night in a relatively decent hotel, staring at the aquarium themed ceiling with the TV on mute. He misses Dean like a constant ache in his side. What he wouldn't give to have Castiel swoop in with his brother, standing there in his ratty trench coat looking vaguely confused, but pleased, and Dean would make some idiotic comment, and Sam would step forward and hug him, hard...

And on and on, Sam's fantasies of them returning home went. Until halfway to the state of - Sam said, "That's enough."

That's enough. Just let it go. He takes a deep breath, then another. Outside the sun is dappled on leafy trees, and scoring the ochre dusted mountains around him. The highway ahead of him winds around uphill. He's breathing. He's alive.

Dean is gone, and he's okay.

_Let it go._

He doesn't know where Dean is. But he will find him. They always find each other. And in the meantime, live a little.

Sam physically feels the tension drain out of him. He fights to keep relaxed, to stay away from the rigor mortis position of yesterday. Sam thinks that if he can just maintain his calm, maybe, just /maybe/ they can avoid the horror movie marathon that usually follows their separation. He purposely keeps post-Mystery Spot and the year with Ruby far beneath the surface of his mind.

Kevin and his mom may be a little less foolhardy, but it's his job to take care of them. Dean would agree.

 

He will find Dean.

Just not right this second.

-

Linda is many things, but not tech savvy, therefore Sam knows it's Kevin who turned on the GPS which allowed Sam to track them to a crappy local bar in the city of Roman Enterprises.

When he steps in, all the apparent regulars are crowded around the pool table, scowling, as their less inclined friends cheer them on, waving shot glasses in the air. This means only one thing - an out of towner is hustling.

 _Dean_ , Sam's brain says, and he shoves the thought away. Of course it's not Dean. The first thing Dean would do if he was okay is come and find Sam, not play pool.

Sam sidles closer, blending seamlessly into the environment the way he's learned to since twenty two, and frequenting bars like this with Dean. A college kid tagging along after his genial, flirty and accommodating brother. Some days Sam had wondered if that was all he'd ever be.

Now he thinks _never again_ , and wonders if that's such a bad thing, for him to be able to walk into a bar on his own without Dean's name pounding in the back of his mind.

As he approaches the crowded pool table, he spies a slight figure in the middle of all the burly locals, a cue balanced perfectly in her fingers. It's Linda.

Sam has learned not to be surprised by anything Mrs. Tran can do.

She must have pulled the 'poor innocent lady who doesn't know a thing but has money to lose' act, and she's clearly turned on them now, by their faces and threatening stances.

Sam waits in the corner and watches. If she needs him, he will start a bar brawl to get her out safely. He wonders where Kevin is. He must be at the bar, as it is his cell Sam has tracked here. Knowing Linda, she's made him hide in the restrooms.

Mrs. Tran scoops up her winnings and gives a friendly smile, like /ciao! better luck next time trying to outplay a helpless looking Asian woman!/

She heads to the bathroom, as expected, ignoring some of the voices raised in her direction. Sam steps smoothly in, starts asking questions. _Anyone seen a guy come in, green eyes, brown hair, stupid smile? He might've come up here._ Sam knows in his heart Dean hasn't been here, but he has to try, just for the sake of it.

When he looks back, Linda isn't visible, so Sam makes a hasty escape from the players who are now pressing him to try his hand and steps out of the bar. The Trans are waiting for him on the sidewalk, Linda with her arm around Kevin's shoulders. She's only just taller than him. Kevin's buzz cut hasn't grown out yet, and it makes his ears stick out. He's grinning, probably proud of himself for turning on the satellite.

Sam feels an unexpected swell of affection for them. They may not be quite so fond of him, after all, Kevin would probably be in a big leagues college by now if they'd never entered his life, but Sam grows attached to people quickly. It's made it easier to patch together a piecemeal family over the years, to replace the ones he's lost. They're all long gone now, Dean and Castiel being the last of them.

But he hasn't got nothing left. These two are looking to him for answers.

"Hey, Kevin," Sam says. "Linda. I'm glad you two are okay."

Kevin nods. "Nice work tracking the phone."

"It was nothing. Any sign of-"

"No, I'm sorry," Kevin says. Sam knows they're gone, he just can't seem to stop asking on autopilot, or stop his shoulders slumping, but then Linda asks, "So what now?" and he straightens up.

"Now, we just avoid all the angels and demons still out for Kevin. We just need to find a base, somewhere secure, and settle and recover for a few days."

"I've got about three hundred from right now," Linda offers. Sam grins. "Yeah, I saw. Didn't know you played pool."

"My father taught me when I was just a girl," she replies. "I've always heard it being done to get by, and I thought I'd try my luck."

"Fortunate indeed. Next time though, bring back up. Betting at bars can get really nasty," Sam warns. She nods.

"So not a motel, I'm guessing," Kevin says. "Too vulnerable. They've found us easily in motels before."

"As a matter of fact, we're exposed right now," Sam says. He glances around their immediate area. Anyone could be a shapeshifting leviathan, from the teenagers spray painting the peeling plaster wall across the street, to the occasional passerby usually wearing camouflage pants (which seemed to be some sort of uniform in this town).

"Let's get into the car." They follow Sam to where the Impala is parked, underneath a tree with wide, spreading branches. The midday sun is hot, and Sam'll be damned if he lets the car be damaged this time around.

Kevin takes shotgun and Linda slides into the back. Sam starts the car, and no one asks where they're going now.


	2. Chapter 2

"So what happened next?" Charlie asks, leaning over to snatch another slice of pizza from the greasy box.

Sam sits back. "Well, after I went and got them, I-" He puts his hand in something sticky. "Gross. Okay, who spilled the barbecue sauce on the carpet."

"Whoops," Amelia says, mouth full of pepperoni and not sounding apologetic in any way.

"You're cleaning that," Linda tells her. Amelia swallows her food. "No. It's Charlie's fault, she bumped my elbow and that's why I spilled it. She can clean it." Charlie opens her mouth to protest and Linda silences her with a hand gesture. "Charlie's already doing the dishes anyway. You can clear up here."

"What?" Charlie protests. "It's Kevin's turn to do the dishes!"

"Kevin said you lost a bet," Linda says.

"Yeah, and I've already taken three of his turns for chores!"

"We agreed on four," Kevin says, returning to the room with arms full of bottles. Charlie turns to Sam. "See? This is why we need to get a dishwasher installed. This place is full of nineteenth century technology."

"But the water pressure is great," Amelia interjects. She is ignored.

"Who exactly do you plan to have come into our top secret bunker to install a dishwasher?" Linda questions.

"I can't believe you just called our house a 'top secret bunker', Mom," Kevin says, sitting down on the couch and passing round the bottles, (beer for Sam and the girls, fizzy drink for him, as Linda is around).

"Well that's what it is," Linda replies to her son, in the universal reasonable mother's voice.

"It's not my turn to do the dishes," Charlie says, in the universal stroppy teenage sister voice.

"It's takeout night," Sam says, in the universal exasperated dad voice. "There _are_ no dishes to do."

A collective sigh of relief is heaved. The following silence is only filled by Amelia chewing on more pepperoni.

"Amelia! You finished all the pepperoni," Kevin complains, and another argument starts, which Sam ends by promising never to order pizza again if they continue fighting. A companionable silence follows after the turmoil, the five of them finishing their dinner in various positions on the floor and sofas in the bunker's living room. Amelia is sitting cross legged on the table, Charlie is perched on a sofa armrest, Linda and Sam have their backs against opposite sofas, and Kevin is between his mother and Charlie.

Sam cracks open his beer and sits back, looking at the rest of his family. "So tell us the rest," Charlie says. "You were telling us the story of how all this crazy stuff went down. I was the last one to get here, I missed most of it. I wanna know."

"Okay, sure," Sam agrees. "You didn't really miss much."

Linda sniffs. "Only two months of living in a leaky old warehouse memorising spells and drawing devil's traps everywhere."

"And getting holy water thrown at you every time you walk through the door," Kevin puts in.

"And an exorcism, which is a most unpleasant experience, as you would know, Sam," Amelia adds.

"That stuff has been run of the mill all my life," Sam says. "I guess it must be crazy for you guys though."

"You can say that again," Charlie says.

"Right, well, this is how it was after we killed Roman..."

"Wait, wait, wait, I think this part of the story I get to tell," Kevin says. "If it was so 'run of the mill' for you."

"True," Sam concedes with a chuckle. "So what was life like for you?"

Kevin reshuffles himself on the sofa. Amelia rests her elbows on her knees and adopts an eager listening position. Charlie slides off the armrest to sprawl beside Kevin.

"Well, we lived in this leaky old place for two months..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has my Sevin intentions bleeding through. I didn't plan to start the shippy part of it so soon, but I guess it's good to set things up early, and so here you go. I hope no one is confused about how I'm telling the story.

Sam's life goes on as normal, albeit, without the constant presence of Dean. Kevin's life does not.

Strangely enough, the weirdest thing is the amount of time he's spending with his mom. Since graduation, all he's been doing is preparing for life without her. He already knows how to iron, cook a few basic student budget meals and the basics of doing laundry. He's going to have some roommates, so Kevin has been practicing dealing with people he doesn't know. His goals the last few weeks before the Word had hit him had been to study as frantically and thoroughly as possible to get into the college of his choice, obsessing over his entrance exam, reading every revision of it out to Channing. _This is the most important thing in your life_ , he told himself every day. _This is going to affect the whole rest of your life_. College was his future. It was going to determine the rest of his life. He had plans. He was going places. 

And all of sudden, the world shifts on its axis, and everything realigns to fit in demons and demon kings and heavenly tablets and angels and prophets and _leviathans_  and a couple of giants who apparently hunt _monsters_ for a living, and a brain damaged angel with a demon girlfriend with a part time job as a nurse? but mostly Sam Winchester who is the tallest and gentlest and possibly bravest person he has ever known, also the first person he's met in a while who needs a haircut more than Kevin himself does.

This is all very overwhelming, which is why Kevin ends up breathing into a paper bag with the short, angry one wearing leather talks encouragingly to him and pats him on the back. The nice, tall one is apparently otherwise occupied, which is too bad. 

That was some cabin in a part of Montana with a wacky-ass name, (Whitefish? Redfish? One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish - see? He's losing his mind) and this is one abandoned facility in a long street of decaying abandoned buildings with iron oxide coating the edges of the outsides, but the feeling of panic is exactly the same. This is too much, he thinks constantly, this is all way too much. His mom is still there, a semblance of normality in the cold building with the sigils and wardings drawn on the walls in red stuff that Kevin knows is Sam's blood. Kevin thinks about Sam often too, which isn't unusual, as Sam is there a lot of the time. He brings groceries, and Linda heats them up on the stove that somehow still has electricity pumped to it from the power lines on the road. Sam, his mom and Kevin sit around the table in the kitchen, and Sam updates them on what's going on outside, as neither of the Trans can safely move around out there much, and it's Sam's job to recon. Sam draws stuff on the walls sometimes, while they're asleep, ever more sigils for protection and banishment and warding, Kevin can feel their power humming in the walls once they're drawn, and tries not to think about Sam's strong arms running red to protect them from the monsters that aren't his fault. 

This kind of living, surviving, puts Kevin in a fragile mindset, where he doesn't think he's really grounded at all, has to avoid being fully awake, or he'll go mad. He has to not think about it, and that's the only way he can live with it. Just don't think. It's that kind of blurry, hysterical edge to the whole daily life that really makes this place worthy of the description 'nightmarish'.

In reality, it's not that bad. There's enough water for them to take a shower roughly once a week. The light bulbs still work in the rooms they use, the bathroom, kitchen and the room with mattresses they use as a bedroom. Kevin doesn't quite know why all three of them put down their mattresses and go to sleep in the same room, but there is something very reassuring about the quiet breathing of other human beings you can trust in the room with you. This survival state of existence creates a camaraderie between the three of them, a necessary companionship under the conditions, meaning that they don't keep distances that they would have otherwise.

In between the possession scares and the exorcism ritual Sam makes them memorize, something of a domestic air develops that makes this whole thing easier to bear. Kevin becomes accustomed to sitting on the floor outside the bathroom with Sam, sharing warmth, because Linda takes forever brushing her teeth and they're both waiting for their turn. Linda has started ruffling Sam's hair the way she does Kevin's, and Sam doesn't seem to find it half so irritating as Kevin did. Kevin catches Sam with a strange look on his face sometimes when Linda does something simple and motherly, and Kevin thinks back to Sam telling him he was lucky to have her. Kevin knows Sam never had a mother. He wonders what this life takes out of you. What it's going to take out of him. 

As far as Sam is concerned, life has already taken the most it could from him. Kevin has never seen anyone so preoccupied with anyone as Sam is with his absent brother. His friends in high school, obsessed with girls who will never love them, maybe. He does try to hide it, but he talks in his sleep, and Kevin doesn't sleep half as heavily as Linda. One night really sticks in his head, and Kevin doesn't really know why, because it's not Sam's tortured sleep-mutterings about Dean or the guilt in his voice when he says they have to wait it out here for another few weeks. 

Kevin wakes up one night, and pulls on his shoes to get some water from the sink downstairs. He prepares to step over Sam, but then the man makes a little noise and shifts around and opens his eyes, catching Kevin immediately. "Kev..." he says groggily. The yellow light from the hallway spills over his face. His soft hair is mussed, strands sticking to his cheek, and there are dark shadows under his green ocean eyes. Sam blinks once, twice, gazing up at him through lashes longer than his girlfriend Channing's. Channing seems like a million miles away right now, so he doesn't think about her. Instead he wonders why Sam looks utterly vulnerable, maybe even debauched, and even though he's just looking, it feels too intimate and too purposeful and like he shouldn't be doing this if he doesn't want to follow through with it.

"I'm just going to get some water," he explains. He's not sure if Sam hears him, but then he murmurs, "Okay," and turns over, pulling his blanket over him and curling up to sleep. Kevin steps over him and pads downstairs. He drinks water out of the kitchen tap, might as well dispense with civilized manners altogether, and climbs back upstairs. Sam is asleep when he gets back, and Kevin refuses to think about why he feels a sense of disappointment. After all, what does he want from Sam? 


End file.
